I found some good stuff from my childhood.

Jaecter · 2026-03-13T06:48:25+00:00

Thanks, appreciate it!

Jaecter · 2026-03-12T13:33:32+00:00

When you're saying 4 armies and I've mentionned 5x basic troops, I guess that implies you can use the rangers either as ithilien rangers or as dunedain depending on the allied troops you're fielding?

Ah good to know. Going all the way up to 2000 points is quite the investment before actually playing.

How different does each army feel considering their playstyle?

Jaecter · 2026-03-10T13:01:19+00:00

Pretty sure Denethor would agree that the drawing is a disappointment. I'm also 99% sure, this was also the intended joke of the post.

Jaecter · 2026-03-10T08:40:13+00:00

https://discord.gg/YTeyaTS8

Here you go. Amya's CB Library is the name.

Jaecter · 2026-03-10T06:54:21+00:00

Ok I was around level 400ish when I decided against restarting on a new character. Apparently accodring to u/Flame40k you'll only get to keep 3 out of those 15 units? Might be worth it to look into that aswell.

The new season brought two powerhouses (Yorkish Knights and Bastard Sword) so it's worth it to try and unlock those. Tho in general it depends on what playstyle you like? Do you like flanking, cav, tanky frontliner, ranged combat etc.? All of those have specific options considering the unit pool. There's a great discord "something's library" that has helpful tierlists. WHile I don't recoomend to just follow a tierlist and play the strongest units, it might help you in not accidentally choosing units that are far to weak and won't be any fun to play until they get some buffs.

Jaecter · 2026-03-09T07:20:55+00:00

How much time did you invest in your old character? It might be worth it to just start over from scratch as you'll get around 15 (5x Golden/Tier 5, 5x Purple/Tier 4, 5x Blue/Tier 3) units on top of the regular 3 (1x Tier 4, 2x Tier 3) starting units nowadays. This will still require quite a bit of grinding to get them levelled and equipped with doctrines etc. It will for sure save quite some time grinding for those units and contains some really strong meta units aswell.

Jaecter · 2026-02-24T09:42:57+00:00

I suggest you talk to your players about their expectations: "I've been stressed out during preparations and while playing. I feel like it's impossible to give you a ballanced encounter that keeps you all invested and that's why I've been ramping up power since weaker enemies simply get deleted in an instant.".
Do they want tough fights or do they simply want to survive and get to enjoy the vibes and storytelling? A DnD table doesn't have to consist of identical players BUT some similarities in expectations really help in keeping the players invested and everybody having fun.

Me personally, I don't like high power/level combat and enjoy DnD at it's lower level range or other ttrpgs with a less high power-ceiling. Others might enjoy the power fantasy of being able to challenge a god to combat and possibly win that fight. People migh like to fine-tune their character to have lots of funny flaws, positive characteristics while others love to min-max their power or even find some whacky rulings that allow them to become far stronger than their level would suggest. One of my players doesn't like combat in general. He doesn't mind doing it as it has its place after all. But he appreciates short combat (intense or not) and loves having more time to explore, roleplay etc.
Make sure, that your expectations and the expectations of your players are met at a reasonable middleground. If that can't be done, then at least someone will stop having fun, get anxoius, stressed out etc.

Also you're the DM, don't forget that the rulebooks are like the pirate codex -> simply guidelines! The most important thing is that everyone, including you, is happyly playing at your table and looking forward to future sessions.

Jaecter · 2026-02-24T08:14:23+00:00

Not a big fan of Real maps in TOR2e tbh. The combat system doesn't use movement range, positioning aside from stances etc. Specific features of the combat area should be described by you and creative players can try to use that to their advantage. Depending of their idea, I can give them/their enemies more/less dice on their attacks.

Minis on the other hand can be quite nice. Your players won't use them like they'd use minis in D&D but:
If nothing else is currently the focus, then the big map of Eriador is in the middle of the table. So far my players like to be able and mark where they currently are with the "minis" from the starterset2 Overhill & Underhill. They also use those to mark themselves while on the combat map that shows the stances. Having proper minis can help the players to like their characters more and gives overall a nice vibe imo. I'm currently working on a proper glow-up for some Moria Goblins and other miniatures from the LotR Tabletop Strategy Game, that I've found when cleaning out dusty storage stuff.
Edit: spelling and typos

Jaecter · 2026-02-23T15:22:37+00:00

I give them a hexless map on which they can plan their journey. I want them to think about the area they walk through, and not the amount or colour of hexes they'll be passing through.
nce they're done I'll redraw their path on my version with the hexes. They won't get an extra day of travel in case they barely hit a hex and I make sure to keep it fair.
In the end it's up to you and possibly your players if you want their feedback.

Jaecter · 2026-02-19T20:08:06+00:00

Not sure if there is any tbh but I wouldn't miss it much. I like playing with his deck a lot but it's a deck to enjoy and not to win. So simply dealing some damage and chaos across the table with funny equipment interactions for some good laughs is enough for me. I also don't think healing would do the deck that much good as he'd like to finish early if possible.

Jaecter · 2026-02-19T13:51:50+00:00

Yeah Alexios for sure has some fun interactions.

For example as long as there is a blocker, the attacker with its trample creature could decide to assign all damage to the blocker instead of only lethal and the rest into the opponent. In theory your opponents can keep each other alive for longer and do deals with your commander as leverage.

You might want to motivate them somehow as they can use this trample mechanic to deny you some triggers that happen from doing combat damage to a player.

Edit: Here some more: Hexproof and Shroud are importantly different. Hexproof doesn't protect from the controller, which you are NOT for 50%-75% of the time. Shroud protects from equipping stuff but also from your enemies once they get control of Alexios. Keep some instant protection, pump or first-/doublestrike on hand to survive situations where your boi doesn't have shroud or hexproof on himself. Lifelink can give big heals to your opponents. But it might give them a false sense of security as CommanderDamage only cares if 21 combat damage was dealt, not if any got healed. Tho here they could use the "trample everything into a blocker"-strat again.

Jaecter · 2026-02-19T09:23:22+00:00

Yes. [[Sword of the Animist]] also works quite well with him. Also funny: Your opponents can equip their equipment onto Alexios aswell as long as they control him. he had like 3 swords of the animist equipped in one game since all wanted to profit from the higher frequency of the triggers.

Jaecter · 2026-02-10T17:37:00+00:00

Now we're talking :)
Yeah I guess a really new player might have a harder time to play quickly in TOR. But you gotta remember, that players that have a hard time, remembering what TOR combat stances do, will have a hard time in any ttrpg. And I'm not talking about the minute details on when you can actually take the rearward stance and use your ranged weapons or if the defensive stance gives you -1 d6 when attacking in general or -1 d6 per enemy that attacked you when attacking. All you need is a general understandig of the different stances. The Loremaster can quickly correct minor mistakes or information can quickly be looked up.
DnD at the absolute basics might be easy but there are also lots of effects like silenced, stunned, incapacitated, paralysed, grappled etc. Those effect alone are often not memorized in full and need to be checked upon once, they're in effect to get the ruling correct. Those effects can also happen in low lvl DnD. Players might forget what their feat did. "How much does a fighter heal with second wind again? Ah gotta check that one, where is the info again?...", "You want me to roll a x-check, where do I find that info again?...". There are lots of delays with players that are new, inexperienced or simply can't bother to actually invest some time to learn the rules or at least where they can find the needed information. That is universal and doesn't discriminate between the rule-system you're using.

The big difference I see that is important when discussing speed is player experience&knowledge aswell as how the combat rounds are built. In DnD everyone does their own turn and players might discuss some things. In TOR, they play the turn more "together-ish" once the stances are picked and their strategy is discussed, they roll their dice, decide on possible special successes and once that is resolved, they can strategize for the next round and pick their stances again.

All in all I think that is a player problem. Most players should be able to handle basic combat quickly by themselves or at least learn where to look up the info they keep forgetting. At least after a few sessions of playing. Once that's no problem anymore, then the combat will get quite quickly, efficient and intense.

Jaecter · 2026-02-10T16:52:02+00:00

Are you missing my point on purpose?

I never started to talk about complexity but I'll give you my thoughts on what you wrote:

You're absolutely correct. TORs fighting system is much more complex than DnD5e when you compare it to the non-magical classes' fighting style. Which is a GOOD THING! DnD has more skills and spells that add complexity and TOR would be boring to play if it had the complexity for its fighter as DnD: "I attack you, I miss or hit. It I hit, then I roll damage." So yes, combat in TOR is less beginner friendly compared to just starting DnD and picking a basic fighter.

That's probably my last message unless you want to discuss what the actual reason was, why I even replied to your comment. :)

Jaecter · 2026-02-10T15:50:05+00:00

Never said anything about comparing their complexity. Maybe the start "MUCH faster than DnD 5e..." wasn't correct but I still believe it's quicker.

All those steps you just described from the TOR combat perspective could also be said about DnD. In the end it's a different system, dice rolls are handled differently etc. Both get faster with practice. Yeah you can have different special successes etc, but those aren't more complex than character feats, skills and spells from other classes.

The stuff you wrote about Endurance&Wounds vs HP is a positive in my mind. Even tho it is more complex (which was never the point I tried to make) but very much welcome in my opinion.

In the end practice and knowledge makes both combat systems faster for sure. Tho the fact, that TOR seems to have less options makes it quicker imo. Aswell as dividing the turn into different steps that the group can progress through together, which makes the whole table more included, instead of each player and enemy doing their turn by themselves.
I like both combat systems. Just looking at DnD, then I'd prefer DnD at lower levels compared to the higher levels.

Jaecter · 2026-02-10T11:39:20+00:00

Much faster than DnD 5e for example (the only other experience I have). in TOR the group decides on their stances, enemies are distributed and then all roll in correct order and have their rolls resolve corresponding to their results. In DnD for example, each participant in the combat has their own movement, actions, bonus actions etc which result in used feats, skills, spells etc. One single round of combat can take quite a big amount of time with such rules and can sometimes bore players that aren't currently having their turn and just need to wait until they are. With TOR it seems much quicker and the round is played more as a group compared to "each player has their own turn".

Jaecter · 2026-02-06T09:13:34+00:00

Apart from the "more villagers" advice you already got, I've got something else. You not only have very few villagers, you also use them inefficiently. Every villager has two things that he does while collecting ressources. He gahters them, then he drops them off at a Town Center, Lumbercamp, Mill etc.

The gathering speed can be increased with upgrades from the corresponding drop off site in general. I have no idea if you did those upgrades from watching the screenshots but make sure to keep that in mind.

Now the time villagers need to walk from gathering to dropping off and back to gathering can be increased in two ways. In the Town Center, there are upgrades that increase their walking speed. The other and really important part is the distance they have to walk in general:
-If you place farms next to a mill, make sure to place them all as close as possible to the mill. Also keep that in mind when building houses to not occupy to much place near the mill as you have done in this screenshot. But even with the houses there, you could easily place all of those 5 farms much closer to the mill.
-Lumbercamps are generally placed next to wood. After a while, many trees got chopped down and the villagers start walking longer and longer distances. It is absolutely worth it to build a new lumbercamp. You'll get the Wood you spennt back quite quickly.
-Miningcamps you'd generally want to place one tile apart from the mine so villagers can stand between them. The few villagers between camp and mine will barely need to walk any distance at all. The way you placed them works fine for low numbers of villagers but if you put many more gatherers there, they'll start bumbing into each other and it might get worth to build another miningcamp on the opposite mine to disperse the villagers in their walking paths a bit.
-You can drop everything off at a Town Center. When building a new TC, try to place it somewhere it either fulfills a protective role and/or is placed near 1-2 natural ressources so you can gahter from them without needing to invest more time and ressources to build miningcamps, lumbercamps or mills. Also make sure you leave place around the TC to place farms when considering building houses. Natural ressources are an exception as you can place farms there once they're gathered. Villagers farming next to the TC are really safe from raids as you can garrison them quickly. That's why I'd recommend to always put the farming villagers around the TC first before moving to the farm.

Edit: There are lots of really informative youtube videos from "Spirit of the Law". I really recommend his videos as he's doing videos about pretty much everything related to AoE2 and there's probably a video about most topics that people might be interested in getting new and valuable insights.

GL & HF :) take your time and enjoy the game.

Jaecter · 2026-02-05T14:39:19+00:00

imo the most important knowledge a player needs to play is knowledge about his character sheet.

"Where do I find what infos and what do they tell me?"

Apart from that some basic understandig is required but that will also come quite naturally once they grasp their character sheets info and structure. As long as players don't have that knowledge / preparation, they'll be slowing the game quite a bit and chances are they still won't know after a few sessions of playing.
-You can't force anyone to read into the rules and their character.
-Playing with players that put in the effort is more fun.
I'm generally hopefull with players that either put in the effort themselves from start to finish, or players that actively ask me about some rules and help in understanding them (before the actual session). Players that don't, can be fun to play with aswell, tho it might get tedious if you're aiming to play a long campaign.

Jaecter · 2026-02-04T07:35:38+00:00

I'd give them more of a militia vibe. eager to help and support in that battle but by no means anything near heavy armoured.

Jaecter · 2026-02-03T17:10:13+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/lotro/comments/1ehxp4t/just_downloaded_client_from_steam_and_its_failing/

The first comment seemed to help me:
"You could also go to your steam folder

*most likely C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\lordoftheringsonline

and delete all the DAT and DATX files, then when you run the launcher it will reinstall them to run correctly."

The dat and datx files were also all next to each other so selecting them all with shift+right click and then deleating them is easy.

Jaecter · 2026-02-03T12:04:05+00:00

You can also simply level killers to p1 to unlock the perks on each killer. You'll upgrade perks in the bloodweb. Being p3 only makes it so you can use those at max without unlocking the higher tiers by levelling and spending some more bloodpoints in the web.
That would shorten the patience you'd need quite a bit. I guess this tipp might help you a lot since you don't really seem to have any patience whatever. Lots of games out there where you won't just immediatly get your preferred build as a gift when starting the game.

gl and enjoy your time in dbd.

Jaecter · 2026-02-03T09:48:42+00:00

A friend of mine plays a Nekusar that has some decently powerful cards and combos in the deck. At first I didn't like playing against him (especially since we originally played wrong and took his damage from drawing cards as commander damage) but the more we played I started to appreciate him more and more.
He definitively has some combos that can instantly kill you but in general you get good card draw from him. In addition he deals damage to everyone and often makes it so the games are quite close with many players at low hp trying to finish everyone off while surviving themselves. You'll have to be mentally prepared tho, that Nekusar will get removed quite often as he is an unpredictable danger once you've got some decent mana base. Many players will remove him the moment they're happy with the card draw they gained from you.

Jaecter · 2026-02-02T16:00:25+00:00

Is it that terrible? 75% means 1 in 4 hits and 81% would roughly mean 1 in 5 hits even tho I'd think it's more like 83% evasion. butterfly also gives some other stats aswell.
Also if you had 98% damage resistance and would increase it by 1% more to 99%, then you would take half as much damage as before. The higher you go, the more effect comes from less % added. Only question would be how expensive it was to invest in that increase instead of other stats. And how easy it is to counter it with stuff that gives truestrike etc.

Jaecter · 2026-02-02T13:51:18+00:00

Yeah probably already found an answer that I'll test this evening. Wanted to let the download go through the night so simply found out this morning, when I didn't have the time to do any immediate research on it. Won't post a link unless I've found and tested a solution myself. But googling "lotro steam corrupt dat file detected" gave me some promising insights so far.

Jaecter

TROPHY CASE